Suddenly Here

It was another sunny Saturday in Austin.  Nothing out of the ordinary, except for my dad telling all of us kids, “We’re going to the park!”  For my dad to initiate any type of activity that required going to a park was very rare.  In retrospect, he must have gotten some action at Friday nights “meeting” after work.  Moving on.  A trip to the park for us meant that we would be doing one of two things while there.  Hitting a ball with a bat or lawn darts.

My fathers’ perpetual fear of exercise forced him to find alternative ways to participate in the sports he enjoyed.  For example, my father likes basketball.  It’s not on the top of his list but he likes to watch.  The comparable activity for him…the video arcade hoops game called ‘Nutin But Net’.  And he was miserably horrible at it.  He blamed the rim being a smaller diameter than standard, and the balls were too small.  He was right, his logic was wrong. The same for football, Nerf in the front yard.  And finally baseball.  My father had an obsession with baseball.  He even tried out for minor leagues before I was born. Later in life he applied for a job with the Cincinnati Reds during the Pete Rose days he didn’t get it but the organization was thankful for his interest. Give my dad a bat and a ball and this is were my he could swing a bat and hit a ball as far as he could.  The trouble was he could not coordinate himself enough to throw a baseball up in the air and swing a bat at the ball to hit it.  None of us kids could pitch worth a damn. 

Imagine three children being ordered to head about 100 yards away in three different locations.  Right field, middle field and left field.  My dad made his children the OUT fielders for his egocentric game of baseball. It was 147 degrees in Austin most summers, try standing in a field using your oversized catchers mitt to block the sun from burning the eyes out of your head.  While my sisters and I staved of mosquitos and ran away from flying grass hoppers.  My father would stand at a beer can on the ground signifying home plate throwing a baseball into the air and swinging at it with all his might.  Time and time again he would miss the ball, pick it up, throw it in the air, swing at it again, miss and repeat the process.  Occasionally when he missed he would bang the bat into the ground leaving a divot in the dry sand.  What was really funny was when he would miss the ball, swing the bat towards the ground and hit “home plate” spraying beer all over his jeans and boots.  Usually that signified the end of that. No hits, no runs, no outs.  Just another day at the diamond with my dad and his dreams.

Jeans? Boots? Yes my father found it mandatory to wear jeans or “Wranglers” as he referred to them.  like rich people don’t wash their car, they wash their Porsche.  My dad wore his boots just about everywhere we went, including he hot ass park.  Until the day he shocked us all.  

Back to the beginning where my dad annonced, “We’re going to the park!”  My sisters and I start to gather the baseball equipment, the lawn darts, the red coleman cooler for beer and grape soda.  My oldest sister would make a variety of Carl Buddig lunch meat sandwhiches. A couple with mustard and a couple with mayonnaise.   By now the car is packed and we are ready to go.  

The door to the master bedroom slowly opened, but there was nobody there.  This often happened because my dad was forgetful and would start to walk out of a door and forget something and turn back to get it leaving the door way empty.  Then he emerged.  All 6’ 3” of my father stepped into the living room and our jaws dropped.  We could see his legs.  YES! My father was wearing shorts.  We had no idea he had actual legs.  Silence filled the room.  He stood there, tugging on his tube socks with red and yellow rings around the calves.  His shoes were not boots instead they were rubber soled cleats. His legs bowed out dramatically from one another.  One would think he had a horse.  The shorts were blue and revealing about 55% of his thigh.  By todays standards that’s a little too much thigh for a man.  Magic Johnson and Isaiah Thomas were the only black men that could pull that look off.  The hair on my fathers legs was clustered together in little balls all over the place.  It looked like someone had stuck taco meat to his skin.  After the shock wore off my sisters and I laughed at him hysterically.  Then we got scared and ran to the car, got in shut the doors and waited.  We didn’t mind that the inside of the car was like a convection oven.  This time to ourselves gave us an opportunity to talk as much shit about him as possible.  

My dad presented to the car with his aviators, his baseball shirt, his baseball socks and his “Studio 54” shorts carrying a Nike duffel bag.  ”What’s in the bag?” I asked.  His Typical response, “Stuff.” My dad opened the drivers’ side door and sat in down into the seat.  Under his breath he muttered, “Shhhhhiit! Got Damn!” In the many years past my father has forgotten the number one rule about wearing shorts in Texas and getting into a black Buick town car with leather seats.  You’re gonna burn your balls off.  Us kids didn’t laugh, we just dropped our heads and looked at each other with little smirks on our faces. 

We got to Zilker Park.  We start to get our stuff from the car and look for a shady spot with a bench to put the cooler on.  I begin to unload the gloves and balls from the trunk of the car. My dad stops me and hands me the bag of “stuff”.  Inside I find two new gloves and several baseballs the size of grapefruits.  I ask what happened to the baseballs and my dad replied, “Those are softballs.”  Holds his hand out and I toss him one.  I remember it felt lighter and softer than a normal baseball.  He grabs a bat and a beer and heads out to the sun. His legs looked like parenthesis as he walked away.  He ordered us out to our normal positions in the out field.  None of us were anticipating much like a typical day at the park. 

Suddenly out of no where we hear a crack of the bat.  It sounded like someone hit a pinata full of lotion.  We look up and screaming into the sky is a soft ball with white flash of light.  The ball begins it’s parabolic crest at about 400 feet then turns back towards the earth at about 225 miles an hour.  It’s headed right for my sister to my left.  She scrambles for position to put herself under the ball and block the sun with her glove at the same time.  As the altitude of the ball reaches about 80 feet we could all hear this psssssshhhhhhhh noise coming from the ball.  That was re-entry shit right there.  Things that only NASA hears.  My sister panicked and looked away then back at the ball, it was right there! She dives out of the way as the ball screams past her feet and lodges itself into directly into the earth  No bounce, no roll just a swift pssssshhhhh THUD.  

My sister gets to her feet and dusts her self off.  My other sister and I run over dropping our gloves to make sure she was okay.  We surround the ball staring down at it like the ball just dropped from space.  I’m pretty sure there was smoke coming off of it.  All of our minds are completely blown away.  We turn and look back at our father who was standing there with his bat perched on his shoulder.  He looks back at us, drops the bat off his shoulder and uses it as a cane so he can bend over and pick up “home plate” and takes a long hard swig.  He uses the bat to knock the dust off his cleats and says, “I told you to go out!”  My sister looks at the two of us says, “He looks so stupid in those shorts.”  

I love you Dad. 

This morning I awoke to birds singing to a dark sky.  This can only mean one thing, daylight savings time.  For some reason there is always some type of confusion regarding daylight savings time.  Do a change my clock Saturday night? Or is it technically Sunday morning? Or is it Sunday night which would make it Monday morning?  Lucky for me the first world convenience of an iPhone tells me exactly what to do.  

As I was saying, it was seven o’clock in the morning and it was dark out.  My wife is sleeping next to me and she occasionally jerks herself awake as her tongue falls to the back of her throat and she lets out a snort of suffocation.  I think she sometimes uses that sound to passively let me know that I am disturbing her by…well of all things, moving.  Time to roll out of bed.  I stumble downstairs to let the dogs out. Now that chorus is stuck in your head, you’re welcome all you thirty somethings.  I realize that the puppie’s schedule that we worked so hard to accomplish is an hour off. Now she’s eating an hour earlier than yesterday, pooping an hour earlier than yesterday and peeing…well she pees all the damn time.  But you get my point.  She by no means is concerned about the change in schedule as she performs sideways tricks while I fill her bowl with a cup of dry dog food that closely resembles packing material from the Philippines.  

I watch her eat in amazement.  She doesn’t breathe.  She doesn’t give a shit.  She is food and poop driven. Her concept of time is meaningless.  ”Jamaica Time” is what the locals called it when you show up 20 minutes early for your snorkeling adventure and Jean’Luis shows up two hours later and says “Jamaica Time!” 

The Farmers Almanac questioned “How much daylight are we really saving?” My answer, none.  What is happening is that the inevitable is just being delayed.  Elton John protested doing away with daylight savings time in his hit song “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”  Which brings me to my next point, babies don’t give a shit about time.   Babies don’t care if we save 10,000 barrels of oil a day just because it’s light out at nine at night.  Babies don’t care if fewer car accidents occur because it stays lighter out.  Babies only care about one thing, how can I make this the most miserable situation for my parents as possible?  It’s true.  I don’t even have a kid yet, but the nightmares I hear about and even see on a regular basis are mind boggling.  

Scenario:  It’s 2:27 am.  You just got your head on the pillow after 15 hours of pure torture.  Baby opens one eye, looks around the room sees that it’s at least dark AND quiet which means Mommy and Daddy are starting to settle in for the night. Baby opens other eye and focuses in on it’s other fully developed sense, hearing.  Baby doesn’t hear anything.  For baby things are looking really good for an ambush.  Baby squirts out one little fart, waits…hears no laughter. Who doesn’t laugh at a their own farts let alone a baby fart? This is a good sign for baby, that means nobody is close by enough to hear him.  Baby raises legs into the air and reaches for his toes, takes a deep breath and lets out the best blood curdling scream possible.  His arms and legs are fully extended like a Steven Tyler finale.  Your eyes pop open and the first thing that enters your brain is, “Who the hell would boil a live cat at 2:30 in the morning?” Soon you realize this is your kid.  You hop to your feet with one house slipper in the right place and the other, who knows.  You hobble into the nursery and gaze at your twleve pound shit factory and wonder what the hell is going on.  Things were great 17 minutes ago!  You reach for your child and realize, he’s wet.  You place him on the changing table.  Baby thinks to himself, ‘Stop crying, if I stop crying the process of getting a dry diaper and my ass dusted will be much more pleasant if daddy opens his eyes enough to see me smile.” Your patience begins to regenerate just in time for the puke.  Baby noticed your joyful smile while reaching for a second clean diaper and decided he would really push the limits and puke all over the changing pad.  

Dads and some moms this question is for you.  Had you or have ever played Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat?  It’s a two player platform video game that allows you to beat the hell out of your opponent in a fantasy world.  On the top of the screen is your health status bar.  As you get your ass handed to you, your health bar starts to diminish.  If for a while you are able to defend yourself from kicks and punches you health status bar increases back to “healthy”.  This repeats itself over and over again until finally one of you goes on a run and the others health runs out completely.  The good news, you both get a second, and a third and an infinite amount of chances to replay.  

With every shit, puke, tantrum and eating something out of the dogs butt situation we will encounter, I will love my son endlessly.  I will love him more and more between each change of the clock  Our health will not suffer because of the blows my son delivers to me and his mother.  We will only become stronger as a family.  

I started to look frantically for my favorite bulk cereal in the pantry.  When I opened the door a jar of peanut butter fell out and nearly amputated my little toe.  Lucky for  me the dog was just between my feet and her head diverted the trajectory of the peanut butter jar.  She’s fine, she slept for 6 hours.  Anyhow my wife will agree that I have a case of “Refrigerator Syndrome”.  I suffer from not being able to open the fridge and see exactly what I want directly in front of me.  The syndrome is also applicable for the laundry, items in the car, items in the car, spice cabinet, medicine cabinet, night stand, junk drawer and of course, the pantry. 

Occasionally I get a wild hair up my butt and completely disect the pantry.  It usually consists of me pulling out jars, cans, boxes, wrappers, pastas, food saver things and a little bit of swearing.  “30 types of crackers?  Who the hell needs thirty types of crackers?”  Quickly I forget why the hell I was even digging around in the pantry to begin with.  I can feel my ears beginning to warm up as I dig for some hope of white shelving.  Within minutes the floor is covered in shit from Bob’s Redmill.  You know, from that time I went gluten free and spent $127 on powdered baking materials that earned me one flat pie and some really nasty cookies? My kitchen floor looked like Al Pacino’s desk in Scarface.   

I continue to dig through pulling enough cans of refried beans to support a Mexican apocalypse.  16 cans of refried beans.  Why? And they are heavy! Lucky for me, 12 of the 16 cans were nicely packaged in long rectangular box.  Said box weighed about eight pounds.  So I did what any expecting father would do and propped the box in my left arm like the Heisman stance.  Then I started to continue to remove items from the pantry in search of my cereal all while carrying this box like an eight pound child.  Up, down, twist, bend, up, down, twist, bend.  Richard Simmons would be proud.  I was imaging how I must have looked pretending to be that father of an eight pound box of brown lard. Maybe I’m not too far off.  Clutching on to a perfectly square eight pound child in one hand made things a little more complicated.  So I opened the box and took out three cans of beans.  “There!” I thought, “Our kid will likely weigh about six pounds, right?”  I got back to work holding on to the box.  But now there was a problem.  Every time I bent over, a can of beans would fall out and hit the floor.  I failed to recognize that I opened the can shaped dispense flap on the box. The flap was designed for easy retrieval of each can of refried beans.  This can’t be happening! We as a society need a quick draw dispensary of refried beans in our pantry?  Now my kid weighs five pounds and I have two dents in the hardwood floor, I’m surrounded by white powder that resembles cocaine, several cans of refried beans are at my feet, I have an unconscious dog that sustained a head injury from a falling jar of peanut butter and I’m holding on to a half a box of individually packaged brown lard tubes that I am pretending is my unborn child.  I think I’m ready to be a dad.

This will be a recap.  Now that you have had time to get fully irritated with the multiple emails I think it’s an appropriate time to start a blog.  After the third email several of you suggested that I start a blog to document this wonderful process of parenthood.  When I say some of you I mean, one of you.  So thank you for your support…person.

The amount of grammatical and spelling errors throughout this blog will surpass that of clever Bush quips.  This blog is off the cuff.  My mother is the english major take it up with her. 

I will start with a short summary of an email I sent out on November 1st, 2012. Words like gummy bear, nugget and glow worm were used to describe our unborn child (who remains in such a state).  Other identifiers such as it, he and she were casually tossed around.  Clearly by this point we had no idea what exactly was growing inside of my wife.  We did identify a forehead and a chin.  The latter was determined to be of the Wright Clan.  The Wright chin has the significance of a family shield to us.  You know how kilt patterns are very specific to the family and not duplicated?  That’s my chin, both of them. 

Also at this time we opted not learn the gender of our child.  We decided this because we didn’t want a bunch of pink or blue shit all over the house.  We later found out and the first thing I did was buy a dog crate and a lamp with a blue lamp shade decorated in tractors and buldozers. I hope he likes the crate.  The dogs sleep alot better with a light on. 

I remember I was suprised by the fact that there are 75 options in strollers in the store.  I admire the simplicity of the standard 8 wheel stroller with ram horn shaped handles.  You know the kind.  It’s the one that on each peg that protrudes from the bottom of a loosely slung piece of canvas are two wheels.  Totalling 8 wheels, two on each corner.  This is the same stroller that you would see that single mom pushing through the cross walk as you paitiently waited for her to dig the trapped wheelset out of the pot hole that just swallowed it.  It wasn’t known for its agility or versatility and it certainly wouldn’t let you stop out a ciggarette without veering off track like a pissed off shopping cart.  Both hands at all times is what I learned.  Just today I witnessed a four year old kid squeezing his butt into one.  The wheels splayed out under the stress.  But I thought to myself, “Self there’s more camber so better cornering and control right?”  So we have a Britax and I really want a Bob. 

This email was also the one where we put in a request for cleverly tagged onsies. Offensive is more up our ally. The type of onesies we like are the ones that read things like, “I just spent nine months on the inside.”.  Others include “Halfro” or the one my wife came up with “Be yourself nobody likes you anyway.”  How could anyone get offended by that written the chest of a 6 month old child? 

At 12 weeks, things were right where they were supposed to be.  My wife wasn’t showing any signs of pregnancy from the armpits down.  I was trying to wrap up my summer by staying under 250 pounds.   I sent out that dreaded ultrasound picture that only we can interpret.  This is the same picture as “D-I-N-K”s we couldn’t stand to look at while we stood around at a birthday party.  It’s the time you’re only looking for the refreshments table at your friends Fourth of July party and suddenly Leon from accounting stops you and whips out his iPhone.  As he threads through his pictures he asks you how you’re doing.  You begin to respond, “I’m doing really well, just looking for a cold beer.” Next thing you know Leon is holding up a distorted image of shadows and highlights from his virtual wallet photographs.  “That’s my kid! 18 weeks!”  “I don’t give a shit Leon.” is what runs through your brain.  But instead you play along and congratulate the guy and escort him over to the cooler and grab him that cold beer you were on a mission to get.  I was Leon.  So friends and family send me and email with “I don’t give a shit” in the subject line.  It is deserved.